


Love

by flashindie



Category: Bleach
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-07
Updated: 2013-02-07
Packaged: 2017-11-28 11:52:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/674096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flashindie/pseuds/flashindie





	Love

The clouds have gathered, built up like clay, like cotton candy, like blankets on the end of a bed.

Orihime’s cheeks are flushed, bright and pink like fresh cut rose buds and she clenches her eyelids so tight over honey irises that Ichigo wonders what it is, exactly, that she’s trying so hard to hold back.

“I love you,” she yells, calls out onto the howling breeze. Says it so loud that the sound catches in Ichigo’s ears, won’t get out no matter how long he’ll shower for that night.

The rain pours.

*

“You said thank you?” and Rukia, she quirks a brow, stabs the juicebox with the straw and proceeds to shoot a sickeningly all-knowing smirk up at him from around the straw.

Ichigo kicks at the sidewalk, “Well, what the hell was I supposed to say?”

Rukia slurps, but leans back on her heels, blinks as the sun beats down, tries to take over the sky. “’I love you too’ woulda been a good place to start.”

“Jeez,” he huffs, glares down at her and he’s just, he’s pissed off at everything, at Orihime and Rukia and yeah, himself. “I don’t though.”

Rukia quirks a brow again, ends up rocking to the side just enough to throw the empty juicebox in the nearest bin. “Right,” she says. “Right.”

*

Ichigo can’t say how he got here, to sitting down on his porch, head in hands and arse wet from the puddles that sprawl across the wood, drip between the cracks. He can’t say how he got to the point where even his dad knew what was going on.

“I didn’t love your mum right away either,” Isshin says, and he drops himself onto the seat next to Ichigo. “I didn’t love her until I realized I had all along.”

“What the hell?” Ichigo asks, but there’s no heart behind it, no bitter smile or angry, self-righteous volume.

“Girls find it easier to say,” Isshin says, “with us men though, it all boils down to whether or not you give a shit.”

“Men won’t ever know if they love a girl until they’re faced with that moment that’s like a bus to the chest and then suddenly it’s all consuming.”

*

Today is sunnier, light and warmth that leak over every available surface and Ichigo tries not to sweat as Orihime takes his hand in hers.

“I don’t know if I can say it back,” he says. 

“Say what?” and her voice is liquid honey, syrup, something almost painfully pleasant.

Ichigo rubs his hands on his jeans, stares at the dirt, the sky, at Orihime’s two long, pale hands. “Maybe I could love you one day, but, I mean, we’re eighteen and I’m not…ready and-“

“Ichigo,” her forehead’s furrowed and her lips are pursed. “I didn’t say it to get you to say it back. I said it because it’s true and it was the right time for me to say it. It would be dumb for you to only respond.”

She laughs this deep, throaty thing that melts in Ichigo’s ears, echoes through his head and drips down the back of his skull and his spine and oh, he thinks.

Oh.


End file.
